Spinach Ricotta Gnocchi

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Gnocchi is typically made with potatoes in traditional Italian dishes. This Spinach Ricotta Gnocchi is a lighter twist with all the richness of the original recipes. Spinach was in abundance with our CSA share last summer, so I became creative in finding new ways to serve. You can also serve this with some marinara sauce if you prefer. Enjoy!

Spinach Ricotta Gnocchi

Author/Source:

Kelly @ onceamonthmeals.com

Ingredients:

2 pounds fresh spinach, thoroughly washed, preferably organic

2 cups ricotta cheese

6 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan

2 egg yolks lightly beaten

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, separated

1 pinch kosher salt and ground black pepper

2 handfuls fresh sage

Directions:

1) Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add spinach to pot and cook for one minute. Once cooked, place in bowl of ice water to stop the cooking.

3) Put the cooked spinach in a large bowl, add the ricotta, half of the Parmesan, egg yolks, and season with a couple pinches salt and some freshly ground black pepper. Mix well, and make sure that the ricotta crumbles into fine pieces, and mixes properly with the spinach. Shape the mixture into balls about the size of walnuts.

4) Place in foil pan, top with a few thin slices of butter and the remaining Parmesan.

5) Place remaining butter and sage into a medium saucepan, saute until sage turns brown.

6) Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes until cooked through. Serve gnocchi with sage butter and fresh Parmesan.

Save some money and gain flavor, buy block parmesan and shred at home.

Freezing Directions:

At Step 5 Place into a container to cool. Place sage butter into container with the foil pan and freeze until ready to serve. To serve: Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. Melt the butter separately. Serve gnocchi with sage butter and fresh Parmesan.

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My husband told me we should eat these w/ every meal. I made 1/2 w/ ricotta and 1/2 w/ cottage cheese. Tastes almost the same but the cottage cheese ones spread more when cooking instead of staying in a ball.

Yes you could definitely do half and half, and yes they’ll probably spread out more but you could try adding another egg to bind them some more, or straining the cottage cheese so you only get curds. Thanks for sharing!

Hi Kelly,
Your family is so lucky, all of your recipes are always great, just like this one. It just looks delicious! Thank you so much for sharing with Full Plate Thursday and hope to see you next week!

My husband suggested turning this into a manacotti, or serving it with noodles of some sort. Do you any of you creative minds have an idea of how I could do that?
Also, mine did NOT come out as balls, how could’ve I made them more firm?

I make these for my toddler as they make great finger foods and are tasty enough to feed the rest of the family as well. I had been following a different recipe but the ratios are awkward–this one is much more user friendly as it uses a whole container of ricotta. A couple suggestions I would give to anyone trying this recipe are: 1) If you aren’t trying to use up a bountiful spinach harvest, by all means use frozen (1-16 oz bag ought to do it), but in either case make sure to squeeze out the water very well before adding to the ricotta; 2) Use to use a food processor to blend everything together to ensure the spinach is very finely chopped, this also help the balls hold their shape.

And P.S., technically these are gnudi, not gnocchi, though they are so tasty no one who eats them will bother correcting you :)